MIT Certifies Biological Engineering Major

chrisd writes "In same week that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney reitereates his opposition to stem cell research, MIT has certified its first new major in 29 years, Biological Engineering. The boston globe has a solid writeup about the biotech major."

Comments

Rat-rights people just as bad.

[Eunuch]

This is fascinating, but the writeup is pure flamebait. I know most geeks are atheists who don't grock all this "religion", but we'd do better to ignore the religious types who won't have any part in the future anyway. This stuff will just move to Singapore or the like as the backwards people oppose it. I'm studying neuroscience, and I have more problems with rat-rights or monkey-rights people (who may be in a different political party).

Re:Rat-rights people just as bad.

[pilgrim23]

Does this negate my degree in Phernology? The Dean did mention there might be a few bumps in the road...

What Romney Said.

[DAldredge]

Romney said last week he favors allowing research on existing embryonic stem cells taken from embryos that would otherwise be discarded by fertility clinics , but he would seek to outlaw the creation of embryos specifically for research.

''Lofty goals do not justify the creation of life for experimentation and destruction," Romney wrote in a letter to Senate President Robert E. Travaglini.

Re:What Romney Said.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

It's just moreau the same...

In other news

[ravenspear]

All MIT geeks rushed to change their major in the hopes that they could engineer the perfect female obje^H^H^H^H companion that would get them laid.

major step forward

[kevinx]

This would have been a degree that I would have been interested in. This is a field that has a whole lot of growth potential. Hopefully with students flocking to this profession we will see some major innovation.

Well well..

[PopeAlien]

I for one welcome our genetic engineering overlords.

now lets get on that woodchuck problem

Submitter majored in reading comprehension

[cpeikert]

It says (right in the headline!) that BME is a minor, and BE might become a major.

Nice writeup.

[helix400]

Hmm...starting your article with a misleading flamewar rant against a politician? It's right on par with Slashdot's level of professionalism.

Re:Nice writeup.

[operagost]

In case anyone is confused because they didn't RTFA, here's the opening paragraphs (emphasis mine):

WASHINGTON -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy yesterday blasted Governor Mitt Romney's proposal to ban the cloning of embryos for stem cell research, saying the governor's approach would rob Massachusetts of the benefits of one of the most promising areas of scientific research.

Romney, meanwhile, indicated he is open to new research as a compromise on the thorny ethical issue. On Friday, he is scheduled to be briefed on a method of generating embryonic stem cells without creating embryos.

Re:Nice writeup.

[anonicon]

"Hmm...starting your article with a misleading flamewar rant against a politician? It's right on par with Slashdot's level of professionalism."

Oh, lighten up Francis. Slashdot is a glorified blog. It is neither a newspaper nor a professional media outlet a la Time, Fox, CNN, etc. Why do you expect it to be?

Re:Nice writeup.

[helix400]

Why do you expect it to be?

I expect people to not be misleading. I don't care who they work for.

Re:Nice writeup.

[mdmarkus]

Slashdot is a glorified blog. It is neither a newspaper nor a professional media outlet a la Time, Fox, CNN, etc. Why do you expect it to be?

Err, because they charge money?

Georgia Tech Biomedical Engineering

[ap0]

Georgia Tech has had Biomedical Engineering offered as a major for a few years now. It's a pretty popular new major.

DNA Hack

[TheSync]

For those who want to start early to get ready for this, check out DNAhack, the website for amateur genetic engineering.

Ummm...

[Combuchan]

So, MIT is essentially doing what Rice, SUNY Stony Brook, Lehigh, Rice, Syracuse, and even Mesa Community College have been doing for a very long time now?

Yes, this is MIT, and they have a potential to become the leading institution in the field, but respected universites have already established programs. When MIT comes out with something revolutionary from their new program, then I'll be interested.

Re:Ummm...

[amabbi]

Yes, this is MIT, and they have a potential to become the leading institution in the field, but respected universites have already established programs. When MIT comes out with something revolutionary from their new program, then I'll be interested.

RTFA, please. MIT is already a leader in what you call "bioengineering," particularly in interdisciplinary fields integrating biology and engineering. In addition, MIT already has a joint program with Harvard medical school (the Health Sciences and Technology program). The new "biological engineering" field is different in that the tradition view of BE/BME is "engineering applications of biology." MIT wants to rethink this view. From TFA:
However, each established engineering discipline is naturally limited to addressing a certain range of problems within biology that fall within the scope of tools and approaches of that discipline. The fusion of engineering with modern biology, then, requires development of a new discipline of engineering, "Biological Engineering," which brings to bear on biology the appropriate tools and perspectives from chemical, civil, computer, electrical, materials, mechanical, and nuclear engineering in an integrated way. Biological Engineering is not envisioned as replacing the individual efforts, but rather enhancing them by pushing new frontiers.

Tired: Student Loans

[saddino]

Wired: Student Clones

Embryos and Life and Fertility Clinics

[Concern]

I have a question, I am seriously, honestly just looking for more knowledge about this.

Leaving aside your religious or personal beliefs about the rights of stem cells and embryos, about which reasonable people can disagree... and about whether federal funding should pay for something versus should it be allowed at all (another entirely lively discussion)... is it true that there is a double standard for fertility clinics?

I have been reading about fertility clinic procedures that involve activities with embryos, on quite a large scale, that should seem objectionable to RtL advocates concerned with stem cell research. But I don't perceive the same kind of advocacy against IVF activities that result in the destruction of microscopic life, as I do against stem cell research.

I am not a doctor. I know that IVF involves harvesting eggs and fertilizing them en masse, then transplanting a few back to the mother and discarding the rest.

So:

Assuming you consider microscopic human life sacred, is this morally distinguishable somehow from stem cell research?

Is it actually the case that RtL advocates do oppose IVF as much as stem cell research?

Re:Embryos and Life and Fertility Clinics

[Avallach]

Most people that I know of who are familiar with the process of IVF and stem cell research and consider a zygote to be a human being (A fairly narrow group, but one you seem to be asking about.) do regard IVF as unethical as stem cell research. The short version is that any time you're creating a human being with the knowledge that it will be destroyed, you're on shaky ethical ground. Whether that's the embryos lost in implantation, freezing, thawing, stem cell research, contraimplantational devices, or what have you, it's ethically the same.

This is the heart of the stem cell debate for most people that I know. If an ethical method of harvesting stem cells that doesn't involve creating embryos to kill them can be found, then I'm all for it! There have been several promising stories on /. in that direction, and I sincerely hope that scientists manage to accomplish that goal. Stem cell research is a technology with incredible potential, but it must be pursued in line with ethical guidelines.

Re:Embryos and Life and Fertility Clinics

[Avallach]

Deontology is a dangerous path. The ends rarely, if ever, justify the means. I don't know how we'd master IVF without failing lots of times, yet I cannot sanction the lives lost in said failure. My point was that it's destruction of life that's critical, not the idea of IVF itself. (There are those who feel that the very idea of IVF moves into playing God, but I would respectfully disagree.)

Again, with stem cell research, I cannot sanction those forms that involved the destruction of human beings. Finding new ways to acquire stem cells that don't involve that is the way forward, and more research needs to be done here. Everyone wants to heal people and save babies, etc. It's just that we can't ethically do it at the expense of killing others.

Honestly, I view the position of modern scientific ethics as somewhat confusing. We don't permit experimentation on infants, even prenatally, unless there's an absolutely essential reason to try the treatment, often as a last ditch effort. Yet somewhere before the two week mark after conception we seem to feel that the embryo/fetus ceases to be a human being and becomes fair game for experimenting. It is difficult to reconcile those two positions ethically or logically.

Re:Embryos and Life and Fertility Clinics

[Avallach]

Not at all. Separate the idea of human life (being quite specific there) from a human being. It is at time necessary to harm human life for the betterment of human beings. I know I'm using the terms slightly differently than they're used typically, so to clear up the vocabulary a bit:

All human cells are human life. From sperm to egg to retina to skin to whatever you choose to stick in here.

Not all human life comprises a person with a sense of being. In the case of zygotes and embryos, loss of even a single cell of that life can result in the death of a human being, but I personally lose thousands of cells on a daily basis. Other ethical concerns aside, the spilling of cells in masturbation is ethically no different than shedding skin.

The ethical line that I see is where one crosses from something that has the possibility to create a human being (sperm/egg) to something which is a human being (embryo/zygote)

Finally, it's of interest to me that you assume I hold my beliefs on a religious basis. I do, but have not indicated that previously to the best of my knowledge. Is it not possible to respect human beings in all their forms from a non-religious point of view?

Re:Embryos and Life and Fertility Clinics

[Concern]

First, let me say that I don't want to make any assumptions about you. I respect you, I respect that you are discussing this hot topic so civilly, and more than that I would not think any less or more of your views regardless of whether they come from your religious authority or you come to them on your own.

I mentioned the (by implication, Christian) bible just because most RtL proponets are Christians; no comment on you personally at all. Honestly.

You say you consider the gametes in semen to be more like skin cells. These are human life, but they are not a human being. So, by your definition, masturbation is not murder. You claim that spilling seed does not destroy life. This is quite reasonable and logical. You are not out on a limb with this assertion either. Many, many people agree with you.

But let's say that I don't.

I say that each sperm is a life that could have been. That should have been.

A skin cell will never become a human being. But this is a sperm. Becomnig a human being is what God made it to do.

You can say that a sperm is not a human being because, unlike the fertilized ovum, it isn't going to mature into an adult all by itself. But I say that a fertilized ovum is not going to mature into an adult all by itself either. It, just like the sperm, depends on billions of other cells within the woman, without them it is every bit as doomed as the sperm.

I can quote the bible to back me up. Of course, we differ over its interpretation, but this is what scholars have been doing for millenia - differing over how to interpret the bible. I also have science to back me up. And of course, we differ over the interpretation of scientific data and claim conflicting things are facts.

In the meantime, I demand that you stop masturbating, on pain of prison or death. Prison or death is our punishment for murderers.

Before someone starts about "the ban"...

[djh101010]

I'd like to mention at this point that the "ban on stem-cell research" that so many people get worked up about, doesn't exist. There is nothing saying "don't do that" (it's being done). There is nothing saying "don't start any new embryonic stem cell lines for research" (anyone who wants to, can). There is nothing saying "The federal government (US) won't pay for embrionic stem cell research" (they do). What the US government won't pay for is for any additional embrionic stem cell lines to be created for research.

While it's all well and good to disagree with various politicians on a topic or two, people are pretending there's an outright ban on something, when it's really a "we won't pay you to do (thing) in (mode) with (condition)" situation.

Re:Before someone starts about "the ban"...

[Gob Blesh It]

Not only are existing lines contaminated, but there just plain aren't enough of them to keep research progressing smoothly. Also, it's not just "we won't pay you to do (thing)", it's "if you do (thing), we'll cut off your funding for all ongoing projects, whether they're related or not." For institutions like research universities and labs who derive significant funding from the federal government, this is tantamount to depriving them of oxygen. (It's the same tactic Congress used with transportation funding to get states to adopt a minimum drinking age of 21.)

If I'm wrong about any of the above, I'd appreciate corrections.

Re:Before someone starts about "the ban"...

[American AC in Paris]

While it's all well and good to disagree with various politicians on a topic or two, people are pretending there's an outright ban on something, when it's really a "we won't pay you to do (thing) in (mode) with (condition)" situation.

Technically, no, it is not an outright ban. You won't get thrown in prison for doing it; it's not in violation of the law. You could use only non-federal funds and perform this research with impugnity.

When the federal government pays the lion's share of your lab's bills with a big grant, though, you can be damned sure that to do anything that might cost you that funding is, quite simply, professional suicide. The minute you use a single dollar of federal funds--say, some disposable plastic pipettor tips paid for by a federal grant, or five minutes' time of a lab tech whose salary is paid for by a government grant--the government can withdraw every penny of that grant. Goodbye, lab, livelihood, and years' worth of hard work.

...so, what do you do--carefully sequester your new stem-cell research and hope and pray that one of your postdocs doesn't accidentally grab a reagent from the wrong shelf, or that your first-year rotation student doesn't unknowingly save a dataset to a shared volume on a server paid for by federal funds? Hell, no. Not if you like having a lab, care about your research, and want your fifteen-odd researchers to stay productive and employed.

Biotech Scientists No Longer Have To Say...

[kiwidefunkt]

"I didn't go to college, and look at me...I'm kick-ass." - Jack Black, Orange County

Re:The motivation is religious.

[Rei]

Could you explain this, please? Without the concept of a soul being in the embryo, how can one feel pity/sadness for something that doesn't even have neurons yet, let alone the ability for cognition?

OT, but needs to be said

[antifoidulus]

A line from TFA: At the same time, the government, which funds most scientific research in the country,
Does anyone else see something fundamentally wrong with that? I agree that the government should play a LIMITED role in R&D ie financing the stuff that nobody else is willing to take the risk and finance, but there is somethin fundamentally wrong with this country when the government needs to finance most of the scientific research in this country.
What ever happened to private R&D? Or is this just a symptom of the long term wrath of Carly Fiorna's, Sam Walton's, and Micheal Dell's actions: You don't need to make stuff, just market stuff. That is how you will get rich!
Dangerous precedent IMO.

Re:OT, but needs to be said

[American AC in Paris]

Does anyone else see something fundamentally wrong with that? I agree that the government should play a LIMITED role in R&D ie financing the stuff that nobody else is willing to take the risk and finance, but there is somethin fundamentally wrong with this country when the government needs to finance most of the scientific research in this country.

It depends, in part, on what you think government should do. If you think that government should play a minimal role in the advancement of society, then yes, this is wrong. If you think that government should play an active role in the advancement of society, then no, this is an excellent thing.

That said, I'd personally much rather have the government fund pure scientific research than the private sector. The private sector simply can't afford to aggressively fund overarching scientific research; instead, they fund applied scientific research. They're interested in getting something they can sell, whereas the government is interested in making more generalized advances in scientific knowledge.

These two types of science are separate, but they both rely heavily on the other. Without pure science, applied science would suffer for lack of new ideas and the breakthroughs that only come from decades and decades of careful, dedicated, uninterrupted, expensive research. Without applied science, pure science would suffer for lack of general interest in (and application of) the fruits of their labor.

Not counting altruism, there's little reason for the private sector to engage in the kinds of large-scale, high-risk, long-term research projects that typefy pure research--simply put, the risk isn't worth the return. That research still needs to happen, though, or scientific progress will slow significantly.

How do you convince a private corporation to embark on a scientific experiment that'll take four decades, cost tens of millions of dollars, and will quite likely result in inconclusive or useless results? It just doesn't make sense--and yet these types of projects are central to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Add to all this the fact that private enterprise tends to jealously guard their discoveries--after all, how do you make money off your discoveries if you give the recipe for your secret sauce to the world for free? Top it off with a sprinkling of companies who actively supress or distort scientific research that could be detrimental to the health of their business (but invaluable to, say, the health of the public,) and you've got another reason why the government should take a keen interest in advancing scientific knowledge.

Historically misleading

[gkuz]

While the Globe's writeup may be "solid", it implies that a new major ("course") was created 29 years ago, and that's misleading. Yeah, like anybody here cares. But "Linguistics and Philosophy" was just a merger of the pre-existing "Linguistics" and "Philosophy" departments, each with their own major ("course"). Philosophy was 24, I don't remember what Linguistics was. The last completely new major was, I think, well before then.

Check out VaNTH.org

[goldragon]

It's a collaboration between Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Texas, and Harvard/MIT, using a $10mill NIH grant, to establish a curriculum for Biomedical/Biological Engineering. Vanderbilt is leading the group, mostly because of the fine Peabody School of Education that is part of the university, and I interned over one summer with the group ('02 graduate with a BE in BME). vanth.org]

Not the first school to have this program

[MacGod]

MIT is obviously one of the biggest engineering schools in North America, but it should be noted that my school has had a Biological Engineering Program for quite some time.

Don't get me wrong, good on MIT for adding this new major, but it should be noted that others have already done so.

Re:Not the first school to have this program

[cephyn]

I think that it's pretty much assumed that MIT isn't the first to think of this major. They're just a notable school in related fields and for them, a Respected Institution, to create the major not only lends credence to the field but also to schools (such as yours) who have already created the major. That's why it's news. If Podunk School of Mooing adds it, so what? Even if it's a great program, that's only minor news. But when MIT adds it, well it not only makes a splash in the industry but it also lends some credibility to the PSM program.

In other words, don't be offended that your school wasn't mentioned previously. Don't be offended that no one really cares (broadly speaking) that your school was "firster". Be glad that your school isn't insane for having the major, and now has academic respectability for the major.

Re:The motivation is religious.

[timster]

Technically all he said was that you don't have to be religious to find it offensive. This is as obvious as it is meaningless -- I know people who find mushrooms offensive. The proper flamebait response is "you don't have to be religious, but you do have to be stupid."

Before we start a flamewar we should be sure to use good kindling, right?

Re:Meh

[randomiam]

Speaking as someone who has a degree in biochemistry and chemical engineering I take issue with this statement. Biochemists are 'usually' interested in single pieces, or small sections of the whole; while engineers are more focused on systems and applications. Over the next deacade, I think there will be need for both approaches.

MIT's not alone in looking into biological engineering, either. SUNY at Buffalo's chemical engineering department changed its name to 'chemical and biological' engineering last year. While there haven't been any curriculum changes yet, I'm told that they'll start arriving once folks get a handle on what a biological engineering curriculum should look like.

Re:The motivation is religious.

[shawn(at)fsu]

If the embryo had any choice in the mater I'd bet it would opt to live. Sacrifice for the betterment of humanity isn't granted by virtue of being able to think or reason. Look how many people don't donate their organs to others once they die or donate their body to science. In these two cases they aren't even going to use them anymore. In the embryo's case the embryo could use them.

Not that I have any moral objections to any of this, I'm just thinning aloud about humanity.

Re:The motivation is religious.

[Rei]

> Without the concept of a soul, how can one feel pity/sadness for any organisms

And yet, we do. Clearly, we feel sadness for adults and children when they die. Most of us would feel sadness for a dog or cat, but not all. Some of us would feel sadness for a mouse; others wouldn't. Few of us would feel sadness for an insect. And almost none of us would feel sadness for an arbitrary glob of cells, even human cells, unless they saw them as a "person".

We feel sadness when something dies that we view as having (to some degree) the trait of "humanity". Without a "soul" in an embryo, it is hard if not impossible to apply that trait to what is otherwise a small cluster of minimally differentiated cells. It doesn't look like a human; it doesn't think like a human; etc.

Certainly, there is no "absolute meaning", no "absolute reason" to apply sadness to the loss of something showing "humanity"; however, there is no "absolute meaning" to anything in the world unless you're religious. Everything is as one defines it, and it's hard to find a person who defines their worldview in such a way that the loss of things with "humanity" is no big deal. Even the most brutal of dictators generally thinks that they're saving more humanity by destroying some of it.

Re:The motivation is religious.

[mboverload]

These embryos do not have that option.

I don't know what the fuss is about, an embryo is just a egg treated with another cell. Women kill eggs all the time, wats the difference?

Re:What's so amazing about this?

[jsdfh20]

Biosystems Engineering Majors are incredibly common. Almost all land grant universities have had them for over 10 years. When biotech started getting popular, all the land grant universities changed their agriculture engineering departments to biological engineering departments. They changed the courses to reflect more environmental and biological topics. The professional society for biological engineering is ASAE(American Society of Agricultural Engineers). Biological engineering is well defined and is considered engineering systems that relate to the creation of food products, handling of plants and animals, and processing of these biological materials. This is different than biomedical engineering which is directed just at the human body and generally involves creating replacement parts(heart valves). It doesn't look like MIT's major will be following the standard biological engineering program, so they should probably call it something else to avoid confusion (maybe celluar engineering). A few of the schools with well-established biological or biosystems engineering degrees: Kansas State University (Biological & Agricultural Engineering) Texas A&M University (Biological & Agricultural Engineering) Iowa State University (Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering) Nebraska University (Biological Systems and Agricultural Engineering) Oklahoma State University (Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering) I am a student in the BAE department at Oklahoma State University. Just to let everyone know that biological engineering has been around for a long time.

Over in Canada...

[UlfGabe]

At Guelph University, we have had biological engineering for quite some time.

It is focuses on two streams, bioreactions, and biomedical.

The Bio-reactions would deal with:

membranes
bio reactors(beer creation!)
remediation techniques (this is a mix with enviro eng)
food creation / processing

Bio Medical:
Custom Prosethetics
Imaging technologies
Different therapies (gene, radiation, chemical, natural)
Cyborg creation 101
Android Manipulation (must be taken with AI*4503)

ect.

Guelph is largly a non traditional Engineering school, there is no Civil/mechanical/other standard engineering programs, very cool.

Ethics

[Valdrax]

This is fascinating, but the writeup is pure flamebait. I know most geeks are atheists who don't grock all this "religion", but we'd do better to ignore the religious types who won't have any part in the future anyway. This stuff will just move to Singapore or the like as the backwards people oppose it. I'm studying neuroscience, and I have more problems with rat-rights or monkey-rights people (who may be in a different political party).

Speaking of flamebait... sheesh!

Have you ever taken an ethics class? Saying that other people will commit evil to get ahead is never a justification for doing it yourself. Should we torture prisoners to get information about terrorists? Why not? Many people would object on moral grounds, but would you agree that we should "ignore the religious types who won't have any part in the future anyway?" After all, "this stuff will just move to [Syria] or the like as the backwards people oppose it."

Why don't we experiment on the homeless (or whoever else we decide not to care about currently)? What basis do your ethics have for supporting or rejecting this idea? Are humans special in your philosophy compared to animals? What makes your moral and ethical decision (which is not based on religion) any more valid than that of someone else?

(My stance on these issues is irrelevant to this; I just can't stand a blowhard whether they're a rabid fundamentalist Christian or a rabid fundamentalist Atheist who is convinced that they're views are inherently morally, ethically, and logically superior to everyone else's.)